About

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I seem to believe that anything can be done well or poorly. As a result of my perfectionism and scientific curiosity, I often spend hours obsessively researching even the most mundane problems that crop up in my life – which air humidifier to buy? how to build a quiet PC that can run recent games?what mp3 bitrate should I use to compress my music? what could be causing vibrations on the steering wheel of my car?

I construct clever Google queries, read through hundreds of posts, engage in long and painful thought processes, and – when all else fails – I actually do something and see what happens. In the end, I usually come up with some sort of useful synthesis.

Since I am unable to break this habit of trying to do things the Proper Way, the least I can do is share the knowledge I’ve accumulated with others. So when I get an interesting result that I have not been able to find on the Internet, I will post it on this blog in the hopes of helping a few hundred other people with similar needs.

About me

My name is Tomasz P. Szynalski. I live in Wroclaw, Poland. I’m writing this blog in English because I want my posts to help the broadest group of people possible and because I want to promote the use of English as the language for the Internet.

I used to work as a freelance Polish translator. I spend a lot of time thinking philosophically about the world around me.

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87 Comments so far

Elsewhere on your site you say that you can hear nothing above 18kHz. That is impressive and tells me that you are either fairly young, or else some kind of freak of nature. My son and his girlfriend are right around 30 years old and, using your tone generator, were barely able to hear much above 17kHz, and I am happy to still be able to just barely hear 14,500 Hz, having just turned 60. That means I lived through the seventies and numerous LOUD concerts and band practices/gigs. (The above tests were conducted using a cheap audio interface and old, but moderately good, powered JBL desktop monitors.)

I work with a chamber music group in Rochester, New York, that is performing a piece for string quartet and “sine wave generator”. The sine tone has to shift pitch several times in synchrony with the quartet, so it has to be “performed” live. Your program is perfect, and we would like to use it for the performance!

I have made a small donation as an expression of our thanks. (I wish we could give you more, but we have a small budget.) All I ask is that you leave the website running until after October 15, when the performance is! 🙂

David — That’s very cool, thanks for writing! I don’t suppose there will be a recording of your performance that I could see? And thank you for the donation; I never got a notification; did you make it in your name? Anyway, best of luck with your performance.

Thanks for the website “http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/” When I try to donate, i meet some problem . It requires bill address which I can not provide since I am foreigner in AU . If there is a way that only requires card number card type and expire date and cvv

Hi Athos, sorry you’re having problems donating. I think you should try entering the address associated with your credit card — the address on file with your bank (in whatever country that is). Thanks for trying to donate, anyway!

Hi, can you please post your Steelcase Leap review? I just read the one on the Gesture from August and it says you planned to post one for the Leap soon. I’m currently deciding between these 2 chairs and your review would be a great help. Thanks.

I haven’t posted the review because there hasn’t been a lot of interest in my other reviews. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I decided on the Leap after extensively testing both chairs, but YMMV. Try to buy it from a vendor that will let you test and/or return the chair.

Your english and work is amazing! I can’t say enough, and I love the tone generator. I was going to make one but I really can’t think of anything yours doesn’t already have 🙂

I am similar in research/project craziness so I can appreciate that. It reflects in the great work you do and hopefully people can appreciate it!

I love languages and your comment about tools you used to learn English interests me. Do you have a good recommendation for Polish? I know, silly question to ask of a native speaker, but I’m always on the look out for great tools to learn new languages!

Thanks for your kind words, Geoff! Some of the stuff I wrote at Antimoon applies to learning other languages, including Polish, but if you’re thinking about specific resources for learning Polish, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I can definitely tell you that finding quality resources for Polish learners will be hard.

I saw this program online tone generator a few minutes ago and I tell you I like the program and I want to know if you have an offline version of tone generator licences for sale, and if the answer is yes what is the price ? . I usually buy 5 licences for my family’s personal computers. I did not see for sale info. Thanks

I was very excited to find your Online Tone Generator. I am conducting a class on the relation between music and physics. It is entitled: “An Astronomer, a Quantum Physicist and a Piano Tuner Walked into a Bar…”

This was to be a great way to demonstrate the interference waves that tuners use to tune pianos. I have found that the little school house where I am doing the classes does not have wifi so I can’t use your cool program by going on-line. Do you have this as an independent application that I could download and open in multiple windows. I use it now in two, three, four and five windows to demonstrate different tuning temperaments. The pure sine wave makes the concepts pop out at you!

Let me know if you have or know of such an application. My class starts the second week in February and I am very anxious to use this!!

It was a pleasure reading your chair reviews – they were detailed, with much research and effort gone into them, and well-written (congrats on your English proficiency!). Like another commenter, I am interested in your thoughts on the leap. If I may ask: if you were given the choice between a herman miller embody for ~$550 or a steelcase leap for ~250, what is your decision?

Hi Marcelo. Thanks for reading the reviews. For me, the Leap wins hands down. Even if they were the same price, I’d go for the Leap as I believe it is ergonomically superior. The Embody is too unforgiving and too limited in terms of the recline angle. It is better-looking, cooler, and probably better-made than Steelcase chairs. Right now I’m trying to get my second warranty service because my brand-new Leap keeps making loud clicky-clanky noises and the first repair didn’t help.

By the way, are you familiar with the Polish-Canadian musicologist & composer, Mieczyslave Kolinski? In 1959 he wrote an article proposing an equal temperament using the perfect fifth as the basis, that is the 7th root of 3/2 rather than the 12th root of 2. It works. I have been tuning that way for about 15 years. Lucas Mason, a tuner, composer and musicologist from New York wrote the definitive book about it, “The New Tuning”. Sounds like it would be right up your alley to look into it!

Hello Tomasz, your site is a saver. My tone generator took a dump so I have been using your site with levitation experiments. I got the ping pong ball to levitate at 212, 432 and 522-23. The kids love it and this site has been very helpful in the experiments. This was all done at the classroom and as I said, the kids loved it and so did the teacher who thanked me for exposing her to the site and i’m sure she will use it more than I have.
Thanks a bunch

Hey I was looking to buy the one, but there’s no where to click on to look at product info. I took electronics for yrs. not only a tone generator but a frequency finder or set it with your own clock counter… making a clock counter. Is as far as I got just have to figure out resistantace. Maybe a variable resistor. Anyway thanks for your time.

I don’t know about anyone else but I would happily pay for your tone generator page in app form. I use it every day and is the best tool I’ve found for my needs and have heard the same from other professionals.

I understand this is a big ask but if there’s enough interest you could crowdfund the needed money to convert it.

Poland has some of the smartest people on earth. Amazing country, wonderful people. Any of you guys who have not been to Poland, make it a point to visit at some point in your life, you will fall in love with the country and the people.

Hello Tomasz,
I have had Tinnitus on again off again since 1980’s due initially probably due to noise exposure, which has caused defined loss of hearing in one ear, but it has gotten worse over the years and became permanent about 2 years ago, varying in intensity, but very loud even on good days.
I was thankful to find your tone generator online and have been able to narrow in to my pure tone frequency.
Interesting observation I’ve made since I am a bit of an audiophile and understand basic sound wave propagation and the electronics used in many sound systems, is that if I play the tone using your generator on my phone, and move the output speaker into just the right position so that the sound is pointed at and transferring through the bone structure under the ear, the tone tends to cancel out my tinnitus fairly effectively providing almost instant unbelievable relief.
My thought would be that it must be delayed, or therefore slightly or completely out of phase with my natural tinnitus tone, and this changes as I move the phone around. I’ve been wondering if it is possible to have a function in which you could invert the tone wave, or put it 180 deg out of phase so that one could simply transmit that through a Bluetooth earbud ?
I can use one of those now, with your tone generator on my phone but it does not produce the same effect, I believe, because it isn’t out of phase.
This would possibly eliminate the balancing act of trying to get it in just the right position, and also, not annoying everyone else around me

Hi Brian,
As I’ve said in reply to other similar questions in this comment thread, tinnitus is a neurological phenomenon, and as such, it doesn’t have a phase. You don’t have to take my word for it, though – you can just try to start the tone at various random times. If tinnitus had a phase, eventually you would hit on a phase difference that would more or less cancel out your tinnitus.

I find your online tone generator useful but not useful as i can not download a frequency which means i have to return again and again to listen to the same frequency i’m using i’d be more inclined to donate if your online tone generator had a download link.

Hi Tomasz!
I am a middle schooler, who is contributing in the science fair. My topic is all about Chladni Plates, but I was struggling to find data. Then I thought that I could stroke the bow against the plate, use an app to find out how many hertz it was, and double checked with your website.

Basically, I am going to use the online tone generator in my bibliography, because it really helped! Thanks!

PS, this was the easiest tone generator that made sense . The other ones are confusing l:

Hi, this yet another time to pay homage to technology. Its hard to explain in depth why but the fact that a human in Surrey BC Canada can roll over a website and potentially meet a human from Poland who sounds like a guy that would be great to sit down and half a beer. I want to thank you for the frequency generator. I am going to test it out and hope to see even the slightest change. I will let you know. I have one question, ” is it better to try and physically feel the frequencies or is just the sound alone enough to make your cells dance”

Hi Rob, I’m afraid nobody knows what is the best way to do this, or even if it works on humans. In theory, if you feel the sound in your body, it could stimulate your brain more. But we’re talking about research on mice that were genetically engineered to get something that mimics AD. This is quite different from a human who gets AD without any intervention. I’m no expert by any measure, but I understand dozens of therapies that have worked on fake-AD mice in the past have proven totally useless on humans… Perhaps it’s just much easier to treat AD if you induce it artificially. We’ll know more in 1-2 years.

Hi Tomasz
I´m very happy to find this tool and want to support you, as it is exactly what I was looking for.
I wanted to pay 15 dollars, but the payment form leaves me in doubt because of the dot in the numbers field.
I mean: Does 0.15 mean 15 cents or 15 dollars?
Maybe you should consider removing that dot?
Best from here..

Hi,
Thanks for writing. If clicking anywhere closed the note selector, it would be impossible to keep the note selector open and make adjustments with the rest of the UI at the same time. As for the other idea, it’s on my to-do list.

Hi Tomasz, have you heard any more from the fellow that was using 40Hz with his wife who was suffering from Alzheimer’s? Playing it through my subwoofer creates quite an acoustic effect. I’m curious to discover if this is helpful. I’m a psychologist and I work with a number of people with memory problems.

Thanks for your great reviews. Is your #1 go to chair recommendation a leap v2? My only hesitation is the lack of good quality head rest so I can have neck support when I am sitting back and relaxing periodically in between more intense work. Right now I have a gaming chair and its fine but want something higher quality. Is there anything that has the same quality as the leap v2 but has good comfort and a great headrest?

Haven’t seen the Leap Worklounge – not sure how adjustable the headrest is.
In general, it’s impossible to find a perfect chair… If there were something that has all the good qualities of the Leap and also fixes some of its flaws, I would have probably bought it and reviewed it here.

In my testing, I was fairly impressed with the Sedus Open Up. It’s positioned as a kind of office chair for high-level executives — you don’t have to work all the time, you can lean back and look at the ceiling, because other people are doing the actual work 🙂 That’s why it’s designed for reclining. Awesome adjustable headrest, excellent comfort (you could sleep in it), very ergonomic lumbar support, great thermals (mesh backrest), extremely wide recline range, better build quality than Steelcase (noise? was ist das?). I think you can even get a matching (and suitably pricey) polished aluminum footrest for it. But it’s much more expensive than the Leap (maybe doesn’t matter since you’re considering the Worklounge?), the armrests are meh, and the recline mechanism is of the smooth type (which is not ideal), so it’s not a simple case of “pay a lot of money, get something perfect”. Not sure you can get it in your parts (Sedus is a Swiss-German company).

Other than that, maybe look into the Steelcase Gesture. I’ve never tested a model with a headrest, but it looks like the headrest is much more adjustable than on the Leap. Of course, refer to my Gesture review for all the areas where the Gesture loses to the Leap. But perhaps the issues won’t be dealbreakers for you.